New Haven Register (Sunday) (New Haven, CT)
Testing’s price tag so far: $284M
That’s how much state has spent in federal aid: report
Connecticut, which is approaching 8 million COVID-19 tests since the start of the pandemic, has spent more than $284 million in federal aid on testing and clinical monitoring of the virus, according to the latest report from the state Office of Policy and Management.
Gov. Ned Lamont continues to tout
Connecticut’s high rate of testing compared to other states, but the large-scale testing system that exists now is costly to maintain over the long term.
So, with more and more people getting vaccinated and developing immunity to the virus, what is the future of testing in Connecticut?
“For the foreseeable future we’re going to need quite a bit of testing,” Josh Geballe, the state’s chief operating officer, said last week. “We still have entire age groups that aren’t even eligible to be vaccinated yet.”
At this point, officials aren’t sure how the state’s testing infrastructure will evolve in the coming weeks and months, Geballe said, “but we’re going to err on the side of caution as we have done throughout the crisis.”
About 250,000 tests are being administered on a weekly basis, according to state data.
Throughout the pandemic, testing has been crucial to keeping COVID-19 in check, and more recently to keep track of new, more contagious variants of the virus.
As Connecticut gets closer to herd immunity, when about 80 percent of its residents have either been vaccinated or exposed to COVID and have antibodies, the state’s testing strategy will likely change, said Dr. Charles Lee, Scientific director and professor at The Jackson Laboratory for Genomic Medicine in Farmington, which is responsible for about 23 percent of all the testing in the state.
Jackson Labs is one of the top recepients of the federal stimulus money the state has spent on testing, receiving at least $860,000, data from the comptroller’s office shows. That estimate is conservative, and the number is likely much higher, as the comptroller’s data does not include all the different types of federal aid the state has received.
The lab is also doing genetic sequencing on positive cases of COVID-19 to determine whether those cases involve any of the variants of the coronavirus.
“We’re not being reimbursed for that,” Lee said. “This is something we feel like we need to do. We have the technology to do it and we’re sharing that
information with state.”
JAX, the Yale School of Public Health, and the state public health lab are the entities in the state tracking the variant.
As for the state’s testing strategy, Lee said he expects children younger than 16, who are not yet able to be vaccinated, to be a main focus.
Right now, Connecticut is testing people on an individual basis. While that makes sense at this point in the pandemic, Lee said, that likely won’t be the case in the future, particularly in schools.
School districts across the country are experimenting with the idea of pooled testing, a practice that involves testing a group of samples at once, as opposed to testing students individually — a process that is more cost effective and efficient.
“Let’s say you have a classroom of 25 students. You would
combine four or five swabs into one tube and another four or five into another tube, so you’re testing five people all at once thus decreasing the cost per person,” Lee said.
If the virus is detected in one of the tubes, then you have to figure out which of the five students has COVID-19 by doing individual testing.
The latest federal stimulus package alloted $107 million for Connecticut to increase coronavirus testing in public K-12 schools. The Department of Public Health is working with the state Department of Education to determine the best way to spend the money.
“No final decisions have been made yet,” said Maura Fitzgerald, a DPH spokeswoman.
At the start of the pandemic, when testing supplies were limited, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommended only those who were exhibiting symptoms of COVID-19 get tested.
That population will likely continue to be a focus for testing in the future, Lee said, as people who are symptomatic will want to determine whether they have
COVID-19, as opposed to the flu or the common cold, for example, which can cause similar symptoms as Covid.
One thing is for sure, “the day that Jackson Laboratories stops COVID testing will be a very happy day for me,” Lee said.